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Adin Baber, now
living at Kansas, Illinois, knew Mary O'Hair Hanks personally and says
she went by the name of Polly. Her nieces and nephews called her
"Aunt Pop". She was a small woman, and when he was a small boy could
easily outrun him. She was always ready to pick up walnuts for the
children, crack and extract the "goodies" as called them and give them
to the little ones. She had no teeth then and would put a few of
the walnut kernels into the corner of her handkerchief, pound them on the
anvil, carefully of course, then eat them. Mary O'Hair married William
Hanks, September 7, 1827 in Morgan County, Kentucky. William Hanks
was the grandson of the Abraham Hanks, who came with William Calk to Boonesborough,
in the spring of 1775. According to the late Samuel C. Williams,
the eminant Tennessean, a Justice of the Supreme Court of that state, and
chairman of the State's Historical Commission for many years, Abraham Hanks
was the father of Nancy Hanks Lincoln. Thus, Abraham Lincoln and
William Hanks were cousins.
Incidentally,
Adin's grandmother, Mary Ellen Hanks, a daughter of Mary (Polly) O'Hair
did not want to be kin to Lincoln; called the soldiers "Lincoln Hirlings".
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Taken from “The
Edgar County History of 1879, Illinois.” |
